2011-04-27 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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DISCUSSION, AND QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION WITH PLANNING DEPARTMENT DIRECTOR BOBBY JEAN LEITHEAD-TODD REGARDING RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS IN THE COST OF GOVERNMENT’S MARCH 2, 2011 LETTER, IMPACT FEES, FAIR SHARE, AND PAY AS YOU THROW PROGRAM: MS. WONG: Bobby Jean’s agenda item is number 6. And we may have other questions for you. MS. LEITHEAD-TODD: Pay as you throw program? MS. WONG: For some reason, I don’t think that’s in your area, but that’s in the agenda so we’ll see. MR. KUROHARA: No. It’s not. MS. LEITHEAD-TODD: I have a draft thing in the back that I thought kind of got misplaced too. Because under, maybe I have the wrong draft, but under Planning, it says – Base the fuel reimbursement for the Police Department personnel on actual mileage –so I think that the draft that was attached to the version I had was in the wrong place. MS. WONG: And we have your letter, response. MS. LEITHEAD-TODD: On ag lands, I was just at the Ag Commission meeting, and I’m going back to their next meeting, but we were talking about as Randy is trying to get a budget item for a study to basically assess what type of resources we have. The biggest problem with IAL is one, it’s a state mandate. And for me, this is an issue that I frequently have over what occurs in county government is that the public comes and asks us for services that I personally, not wearing my Planning Department hat, but I personally look at and go, that’ssupposed to be a state function. The state has a Department of Agriculture. State has the mandate to do important ag lands. The constitutional provision that says you’re not supposed to kick and punt these obligations to the county without funding. The constitution says you can’t do an unfunded mandate. However it’s done all the time. And the public just looks at the fact that something is not getting done. They don’t look at, the state is supposed to do it or the state is supposed to fund it. So we have an ag commission that’s going, why is nothing happening. And so I ask why is nothing happening? I’m going because the state appropriated a total of $70,000 for important ag lands for the entire state to do a study. All $70,000 was given to Kauai. Kauai looked at it and said that’s not enough money. They kicked in $250,000 from Kauai’s budget. And even with that money, they’re not doing the entire island for the IAL because they said that they couldn’t do an adequate study and plan for the entire island. Randy is asking for some money and it’s going to be more kind of an inventory of what kinds of resources we already have. Like soil conversation people have done maps identifying what you can grow at a particular elevation with existing rainfall. What you can grow in certain areas if you’ve got an irrigation system. And what those maps don’t take into account is other things like you can have soil, you can have sun, you can have water, but if you’ve got wind you can’t grow in some areas. And so there are all those kinds of factors that he’s hoping to identify. 22